The Ripest Rankest Juiciest Summer Ever Ventriloquy Fusion Kitsch
The Ripest Rankest Juiciest Summer Ever
Summer sinks into the clock-face of the cat’s eye Sinks into chestnut colored limbs A 17 franc basket of peaches Day four and already summer has run from ripe to rank All spring long we dined as if we had all the time in the world Followed with interest the color, light and atmosphere Observed the shadows of the grapevines advancing to this Last evening of the postimpressionists The dabs of light thicken on the hammock Grow thin on the windblown curtain Each stroke acquiring definition Until the last stroke added bursts grape-skin Must be August Ripe for the Fauvists Never again will mere light so delight us And O how we weary of atmosphere Our idle conversation spreads like vines in the arbor In this ripest rankest juiciest summer ever And O how we weary of style Does style, after all, exist So like the snow Defiled at the merest touch But while the snow does not exist The hammock is more manifest than ever More than an April iris or an aperitif at six Although compared to soccer broadcast live hardly anything exists Our guest, an enthusiast of “Old Cathay” asserts that in these fallen days Only armed revolution presents so many tragic implications And then there is soccer O how we dine as if we had all the time in the world Smoked salmon, crab and lobster And will you look at the size of this oyster If we could but find the proper outlet To release our leftist tendencies 1906, Cezanne, caught in a storm, returns to his studio Removes his hat and coat and collapses by the window Taking stock of the table, its overturned basket of apples, he notices The “appleness of the apples” and their shadows, the three skulls The wardrobe, the pitcher, the crock The half-opened drawer, the clock It occurs to him proportion is hardly worth making a fuss about He will not fret over whether the table is level or not He closes his eyes and dies His eyelids trace a line pointing straight to three o’clock Still, there is something wanting in all this Must be time for Matisse
I walk into the wrong room And miss my own wedding. Through the only hole in the wall I see All proceeding perfectly: The groom in white The bride with flowers in her hand, the rites The vows, the kiss Turning my back on it: fate, the ventriloquy I've worked so long and hard at (tongue, that warm aquatic creature, squirms domestic in its tank) And the creature says: I do.
When did it all begin This bucolic and pan-incestuous atmosphere Was it not always there in the selfsame family album Lovers fallen to the status of kin Animals fallen to the condition of lovers Nor let us forget the repressive inclinations In the animistic discourse to which All romances arrive in the end